Who
wouldn’t want to be a writer? I’d always loved books and respected the people
who created them, it was just a matter of opportunity. But when I had the time
to write, I was too busy enjoying myself, and then work got in the way, and I
ended up becoming a lawyer, and then a banker, and the idea of being anything I
really wanted to be (other than a
husband and father, of course) just faded away.

But then
I gave up banking, and relocated to a spot about as far away as you can get
from a major financial centre in England, with no viable Plan B, and my wife
reminded me how I’d told her so many times, in years gone by, that I wanted to
be a writer. And that was it.

Did you have any literary influences
growing up?

Not
really. I just loved books, pretty much any book, they were all good. Even an
Oxford English degree didn’t really influence the way I went on to write. I
might admire the craft or the beauty or the sense of the astonishing works I
was reading, but it stayed outside, at a distance, something brilliant but
ultimately alien.

But once
I decided to write, I couldn't keep it out. Every great book, every glorious
passage, I find myself dissecting them all, trying to work out the how and why,
like Frankenstein with a few bundles of literary flesh. And there’s no reason
in it, no decision to focus on books that relate, stylistically or
thematically, to whatever it is I’m working on. So now everything I write has
echoes of what I happen to be reading at the time, and it’s only in the
never-ending redrafts that the inconsistencies between Chapter One’s A la Recherche du Temps Perdu and
Chapter Twenty’s Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows get ironed out.

How much of Bankers Town, your latest
release, is based on your background as a former banker?

The
nature of the work, putting together complex debt capital markets deals, that’s
all pretty much true. The people – well, a number of them are drawn on my
ex-colleagues, generally exaggerated because (much as no one wants to believe
it) bankers tend to be as normal as anyone else, and thus not the greatest
material for a novel. The fraud is absolutely and completely made up – all the
fraud (apart from LIBOR, which I knew nothing about at the time your honour and
so help me that’s the truth).

Some of
the deals are based (very loosely) on real, actual deals. Most of the steps
within the deals did actually happen, at one point or another. The delicately-poised
relationships between different groups and individuals within and outside the
bank, the day-to-day business of putting these deals together, the idea that
they’re basically a gigantic Jenga puzzle made out of compromises and
half-truths, and that at any moment a rating agency or tax advisor or lawyer or
investor or another bank or lender or swap counterparty or your client could
whip a piece out, just like that, and a year’s worth of work could collapse
round your ears, that’s real enough, that happened more times than I care to
remember.

The
notion that it was all a game, that what we were doing existed in its own
abstract world and had no impact on the “real economy” – and accordingly, the
ease with which a banker could abdicate responsibility for that economy and
ultimately for everything he did – there’s an element of truth in that. I’d
like to think that’s all changed, now, although I’m not sure the Treasury
Select Committee would agree.

The
camaraderie of the early years at the bank is real enough, unless it’s just
time and distance putting a pretty gloss on it. And the post-financial-crisis
feeling of a slow, inevitable descent into a place where things weren’t going
to be at all nice, I’ve tried to capture that, to the extent I could, in the
book.

Being a former banker, what was the best
and worst thing about being a banker?

The
best thing, undoubtedly, was the buzz of walking into a pitch wondering how the
hell you’re going to sell your deal without boring the brains out of the people
on the other side of the table, and getting questions you never imagined thrown
at you, and then finding (to your delighted astonishment) that not only can you
throw the answers right back at them, but that they’re the right answers, and
even better, they’re the answers everyone wants to hear, and walking back out
thinking the only way you’re not going to win this deal is if someone else is
actually paying for the privilege of doing it.

The
worst thing is working like hell on a deal for months of long days and nights
and weekends and then finding at the last minute that it’s not your deal after
all because someone else has actually paid for the privilege of doing it.

In your blog “The Economics of Banking”,
you mentioned the lack of knowledge about economics among your former
colleagues; do you think a greater knowledge of the field would have helped
avert during the crisis?

I can
only really speak for myself here, although I suspect many senior bankers in
London are in a similar state of ignorance about the role they’re really
playing in the world.

But
it’s interesting that while I was putting deals together I’d have a view on the
effect my deal would have on the bank, the investors, the client, and the
client’s employees and customers and other lenders, and that was about as far
as it went. It wasn’t until after I sat down to think about what had gone wrong
in 2007 onward, and write Bankers Town,
that I started to look outside this circle to the lenders of the lenders of the
lenders, and their other borrowers, and their
other lenders, and realise that (if I can use an example from the book), a surf-board
boom and bust in Sydney can kill a spark-plugs factory in the Midlands as
easily as a footballer can crash a Ferrari.

If
everyone had studied economics, would that have occurred to them? And would it
have occurred to enough of them to have made a difference? It’s just one thing,
really, correlation, interconnectedness, call it what you will, the
butterfly-wing effect. In reality, I’m not sure it would have made a difference. And I’m not sure it even would now,
because for all the increased capital cushions and Basle III and clampdowns on
bonuses, the next crash is only a matter of time. When it comes to money,
humans are (as I’ve pointed out repeatedly in my blog), dumber than dogs. Once
bitten, twice bitten, three times bitten, it doesn’t matter. It won’t stop us
getting bitten again.

Everybody can name their favourite book to
read, can you name your worst?

I’ll stick
to the dead, and go with Flaubert’s Madame
Bovary, a book that prioritises the quality of the prose over character and
plot to such an extent that it ends up looking like a long, tremendously dull
poem in badly-formatted blank verse. If you’ve never read it, don’t bother.

Much has been said about the
self-publishing phenomenon, what’s your take?

As
someone who benefits from it simply by virtue of being available to readers,
I’m an unqualified fan. There were never enough agents or publishers to read
everything out there anyway – I remember a brief job I had at a publishing
house, straight out of university, flicking through hundreds of unsolicited
manuscripts sent over the last couple of years to the ignominious fate of being
judged by someone who had not the faintest idea of what a
commercially-successful modern novel should look like. So much effort, so much talent,
all consigned to the reject pile by someone who wouldn’t have known Donna Tartt
from a Bakewell Tart/ Julian Barnes from Julian Clary.

Now,
finally, there’s an outlet for it. Sure, there’s a lot of dross out there too,
but it’s not that hard to spot. The difficulty (as a reader) is distinguishing
the excellent from the merely very good. And the satisfaction of taking a
plunge, risking a few quid and a little of your time, and discovering something
really good, a pleasure formerly reserved for agents and publishers, is now
available to all.

What the best and worst thing about being a
self-published writer?

The
best: being able to publish at all, and see your sales mounting up and your
reviews suddenly appearing, and being, to all intents and purposes, a real writer.

The
worst is having to do all your own marketing and not having the faintest idea
how to do it without doing what everyone else is doing anyway.

How much of your time is dedicated to
marketing as opposed to writing?

About
half, now, which I was warned about online before I published, and didn’t
believe, and look at me now. Some of it’s quite fun, I kind of enjoy coming up
with “witty”, topical tweets, and for the last couple of months I’ve been
working with a local film production company on a trailer for Bankers Town that’s going to be, if I say
so myself, absolute YouTube dynamite.

Do you have projects in the work or new
releases share with our readers?

Yes.
There are always ideas boiling over, and a couple of books I’ve already written
that I fully intend to hammer into shape for publication one of these days, but
the book I’m working on at the moment is more of a straight conspiracy
thriller. It opens with a riot at a prison, an armed convict who doesn’t exist,
and a wheeler-dealer lawyer who’s telling the truth for once in his life, but
can’t get anyone to believe him. I’m about two-thirds of the way through the
first draft, so with luck I’ll have the whole thing ready for publication by
the end of the year.

Thanks for
giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts with your readers.

Monday, September 8, 2014

Three months ago, a sea of
black cabs clogged the heart of London for an afternoon and stage was set,
Black cabs drivers were showing their teeth against Uber and media outlets both
sides of the pond were already framing London Cabbies show of force as another
instance of cabbies, in the words of its statement in response to Germany
banning the service nationwide “put(ting) the brakes on change”[1].
However the truth is darn more complex than Uber and proponents will have you
believe. The real reason behind cabbies showing up in number in the heart of London
had nothing to do with the threat Uber offers to their business but Transport
for London (TFL) apparently preferential treatment towards the San Francisco
cab hailing firm.

Just two months before the
protest, the Licensed Private Hire Car Association (LPHCA) publicly urged TFL
to force Uber to follow the same laws and regulations it’s members have to
comply with and the TFL is tasked with enforcing in the first place. However, Leon
Daniels, TFL’s Managing director for surface transport, pretty much sent a clear
message that black cab drivers in the capital should adapt to the new
innovations in a bid to “offer passengers the potential of better and more convenient
services”[2]
However, as Daniels knows, offering passengers a better service wasn’t the
issue a hand as a growing number of cabbies are already using app friendly
bookings to get fares.

In May, the Licensed Taxi
Drivers Association (LTDA) expressed their dismay against Uber as from their
viewpoint the the taxi hailing app company was circumventing a law that’s allows
only taxis to have meters by through the use of their app that according to
LTDA, basically mimicked the function of a taximeter and was therefore illegal.
However, just like the LPHCA, the LTDA real aminus was reserved for the TFL who
in their eyes has so far demurred to the Google and Goldman Sachs backed
company. Steve Mcnamara, predicted a month in advance that the protest was going
to happen as he made that his problem wasn’t with Uber but TFL and their treatment
of the company as he stressed “"I'd be happy if Uber complied with the
same rules as everybody else. All we are asking for is a level playing
field." To complain about these issues, there's going to be a mass
demonstration in central London of between 8,000 and 12,000 black cabs, who
will cause "chaos, congestion and confusion"”[3].

After a month of pressure by
the LTDA and LPHCA, instead of ruling outright whether Uber’s use of their app
to calculate costs in their driver’s vehicle was permitted, TFL sought a High
Court was whether Uber’s app was legal or not. This not only confirmed what the
LTDA and LPHCA already suspected, TFL was less than willing to take firm hand
against Uber but as the BBC reported “ TFL
does not believe the app breaks the rules”[4].
TFL were of the view that Uber weren’t breaking the law by virtue of their apps
not being part of their vehicle as meters are in taxis despite the app in
practice performing the same function as a taximeter.

This central contention along
with others is why Uber has become so controversial across of number of states
to the point that the app service has met a litany of legal and political
pushback wherever it went. Regulators in other countries have been more
deliberate in dealing with Uber with some outright banning the service but TFL
has been notably weak leaving the question left worth asking: why?

TFL, like all big
organizations, are less than forthcoming about their reasoning behind their
behaviour towards certain actors and groups but more than in a mood to share its
grand plans and in this respect we can speculate upon TFL’s and indeed the
Mayor of London’s office careful and borderline preferential treatment of Uber.

In 2012, the Mayor of London
office setup the Roads Task Force (RTF) tasked with coming up with a vision of
the roads of London that’s fit for the 21 century. after a three month
consultation period with various stakeholders, the RTF published a forward looking
report in 2013 suggesting a number of changes to prepare the roads of London
for 21 century that could usher the use of alternative services among them
ridesharing companies like Uber, deliver drones, and the driverless car.

While the report was mostly about
making London easier and safer to get around and improving the city’s road
infrastructure to handle the obvious pressures of a growing population, one of
the main aims was to clearly to encourage less road usage which could usher in
a number alternatives, including, rideshare services (like Uber), delivery
drones and even driverless cars which all would help lower the use of cars on
London roads. The report was also done in conjunction with TFL who had three
high ranking members on the RTF and not too longer after published its own
report that was largely in agreement with the view and suggestions made by the
RTF.

With the Mayor of London
office, the RTF and TFL all on the same page for the need to tackle congestion
in the city, it’s clear that all three parties are interested in reduction of
car use. All this helps explain why London mayor Boris Johnson has been eager
to bring driverless cars to London streets as well as the government announced
that it will driverless cars will allowed on British roads as early as next
year. Last year IBM, who had a representative on the RTF and until recently was
running London’s congestion charge systems after winning a contract with TFL
back in 2007, has partnered up with Google, Cisco Systems and German car parts
supplier Continental AG to work on “autonomous driving systems for cars” which
could see the advent of the driverless car come sooner than expected as many
thought Google weren’t willing or able to get the driverless car on roads
across the globe on its own[5].

Johnson got himself into some hot
water while caught talking up the benefits of Google’s technology in bringing
about driverless vehicles such as buses which he quick shot down after his
published report, which no longer available online, caught wind[6].
While the Mayor’s report revealed his support for driverless cars and greater
automation, his support for driverless cars is nowhere near as bullish as the
TFL .The Guardian reported that Peter Hendy, TFL’s commissioner, wrote a foreword
for a ClearChannel commissioned study talking up the potential of driverless
vehicles in the capital. Professor David Begg, a former TFL board member and author
of the report entitled “A 2050 Vision for London”, even forecasted the death of
the taxi driver as he wrote “ "Taxi fares are expensive in London.
One of the main costs is the wage/return to taxi drivers. Passengers in an AV (Autonomous
Vehicle) world will be able to remotely call a driverless taxi to take them to
and from their destination …”[7].

While there’s nothing wrong
with Professor Begg throwing out predictions about the death of the taxi drivers,
there is clearly something wrong with a high ranking TFL official writing a foreword
for a report that predicts the death of a profession and industry it regulates.
However LTDA’s Steve Mcnamara doesn’t seem too concerned about the Mayor and
the TFL being in favour of driverless vehicles but should be given Uber’s long
term plan to replace its human drivers with driverless cars as last year the
San Francisco company “committed to invest up to $375 million for a fleet of
Google’s GX3200 vehicles”[8].

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has
publicly stated the company’s intention to increase the use of driverless cars
in the company growing fleet of cars and trumpeted this development as a boon
for customers as he said “ "When there's no other dude in the car,
the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle. So
the magic there is, you basically bring the cost below the cost of ownership
for everybody, and then car ownership goes away””[9].

In sum, to the chagrin of its own drivers, never mind Taxi and private hire cabs everywhere, Uber seems on
track to bring about Professor Begg’s grand vision and awful lot earlier than
2050 and with the Mayor or London, TFL and a gaggle of powerful corporations
and business groups in their favour, whose to bet against them.

Monday, September 1, 2014

There many things that are bizarre
about professional combat sports from people getting paid to damage each other
in the most brutal manner possible but the ludicrous, unregulated and downright
dangerous weight cutting in the world of combat sport, particularly in MMA, is just
crazy.

The real problem behind the
weight cutting process is not really the process itself but why fighters cut
weight in the first place. There are a number of reasons why a move up and down
in weight happens including the fighter’s natural growth that demands a move
up, better prospects for success, or a fighter gets tired of gaming the weight
class system and fights at a weight he can meet without feeling like killing himself
afterwards. But the most prominent of them all is to gain an advantage over
opponents in a new weight class.

Lyoto Machida, one of the great
technicians of the sport, made a move from light heavyweight to middleweight
and quickly fought his way to a title shot against current middleweight title
holder Chris Weidman which he narrowly lost. Current Welterweight king Jonny
Hendriks reportedly walks around 50 pounds outside his chosen weight class at
220 which means Hendricks could easily fight at heavyweight, light-heavyweight
and most likely in the near future, Middleweight if he wanted to but at
welterweight, the power and strength disparity he has over his competitors at
170 is obvious.

However gaming the weight class
system doesn’t always work out. B.J Penn, a former two weight UFC champion and
future hall of famer, returned to the octagon after a prolonged break and got
crushed by rival and former UFC champion Frankie Edgar fighting a weight class 15
pounds shy of his natural weight leaving Penn (who retired shortly after) doubting
the wisdom behind his decision to cut the weight when he said “I keep going
back about a lot of things ... was it even smart to go down to 145 pounds in
the first place? Were you going to have the energy all sucked out, you know? I
haven't been to 145 in about 18 years”[1].

Besides vanity, no one of sane
mind and body would want to return to a weight they were at 18 years on a dare
never mind fight against someone just as dangerous as you are. But in MMA and
boxing, constant weight shifts to game the weight class system is commonplace
and indeed part of the sport.

However, gaming the weight class
system is a very dangerous game to play that can cost you your life as Leandro Souza
tragically found out.

In a bid to cut an incredible
33 pounds in week after being drafted at short notice into a Shooto Brazil 43 flyweight
bout, Leandro “feijao” Souza died of a stroke at the ripe old age of 26. Bloody
elbow reported that Souza, in a desperate attempt to make weight, was taking
Lasix, a diuretic and passed out in a sauna still trying to sweat away the two
pounds in his way of making the weight limit[2].

While Souza tragic story can
serve as a study into why fighters are often their own worst enemy, it can also
serve as a study of promoters trying to fill their growing schedule and not acknowledging
the human cost involved as Andre Pederneiras, head of Shooto Brazil and Nova
Uniao, was quick to deny the connection between weight cutting and Souza death
as he said "That could have happened to anyone," Pederneiras said.
"It unfortunately happened on a day that all the fighters were losing
weight. But that has nothing to do with (him cutting weight). We will wait for
more exams, but (the doctors) already said that he suffered a stroke"[3].

Renan Barao, former UFC
bantamweight champion, like Souza, is also a member of Nova Uniao and eerily, just
like Souza, collapsed two pounds out of his target weight which prompted his
team to call a doctor from the UFC and then an ambulance. Anybody with sense would
want to move Barao, who is clearly a featherweight, to move up to 145 after
collapsing trying to make weight but according Pederneiras, who is Barao’s
coach and manager, doesn’t think so. Knowing full well Barao is big for his
current weight class and present when he collapsed; Pederneiras argues “People
say he should fight at featherweight. I know he’s big for 135, but we have the
support of doctors and nutritionists, so I don’t see why changing divisions”[4].

Everybody, except Pederneiras,
knows that the move up to featherweight is inevitable and with his recent
collapse, he just might have to. Barao admitted as much in an interview with
MMA Junkie last year when he said “Actually, I’m naturally the same weight as
Aldo, but I cut more to make weight,” Barao said. “I think I would suffer a lot
less. I sacrifice a lot by cutting. I’d be able to eat a little better and
relax a little more”[5]
The only thing that seems to be in the way of Barao making the move up has been
his desire not square up with Jose Aldo, the current champion at featherweight
and teammate of Barao at Nova Uniao who himself is considering a move up to
lightweight.

In the interview, Barao also
revealed why he risks his health and well-being in the first place was a decision
made by his trainer Pederneira who wanted two champions in the UFC and now with
Barao, without a title and down the pecking order, the move makes sense.

While Barao and his camp’s
choices from his weight cutting drama onwards will be of much interest, the UFC
response to the former Champion’s weight cut issues was just as interesting.
Dana White, UFC president, was quick to publicly lambast Barao and his camp for
missing weight and made public his intentions to deny Barao his purse for the
fight as well as make him fight someone else before getting his hands on TJ Dilliashaw[6].

It’s good to see UFC take some
tough action on Barao for missing weight but it doesn’t help dispel the nagging
thought that the UFC should have something in place to make sure cards aren't spoiled by poorly handled weight cuts. However the real solution is quite
simple, have fighters fight at their natural weight rather than kill themselves
every time fight night around the corner.

In sum, weight cutting in
combat sports, particularly is crazy and only get crazier unless organizations,
camps and more importantly, fighters take steps to actually fight at a weight
that makes that’s healthy rather than advantageous.